Eric Cantor Counters the Journal

Dec 21, 2011

RUSH: I have three sound bites here, ladies and gentlemen, that I want to play for you. Eric Cantor responding to the Wall Street Journal editorial that I mentioned today that I took issue with, the Wall Street Journal editorial which basically accuses the House Republicans of really mismanaging this payroll tax cut issue politically and they say if they’re not careful they’re gonna turn Obama into the king tax cutter. They want him to just cave and go along with Obama and be done with it. So Cantor was on with Chris Cillizza today on MSNBC. And he was asked about the Wall Street Journal editorial, he read a portion of it. “‘At this stage, Republicans would do best to cut their losses and find a way to extend the payroll holiday quickly. … The alternative is more chaotic retreat and the return of all-Democratic rule.’ What do you say to that, Congressman Cantor?”

CANTOR: What I say to that, Chris, is, we’re here in Washington, Speaker Boehner is here, we have members here in Washington ready to go to work, and the dispute boils down to this: Do we want to extend tax breaks and relief for the working people in this country for a year, or do you want to do it for 60 days and be embroiled in this kind of dispute ongoing? And I think certainly the logical position is to take the former. And President Obama is still in town, I hope he’s not gonna go on vacation leaving the American people in the lurch, and that he can join with us in trying to tell Harry Reid to come back to town so we can assure the American people that their taxes are not gonna go up for a year.

RUSH: So Cillizza then said, “I know in a perfect world you’d like a year-long extension. Obviously, Congress doesn’t exist in a perfect world. The options are, if we get to December 28, 29th, the options are a two-month extension or a failure to extend at all, which, as you and I both know, would raise taxes a thousand dollars or more. Are you and the Republican conference prepared to go that way?”

CANTOR: We can solve all of this and make sure the American people get what they deserve, which is some certainty and a year-long resolution to say their taxes aren’t gonna go up. You know, you think about why people are frustrated in Washington, it’s because we’re here, the president’s down the street at the White House, he’s seemingly unwilling to come and join us to say, “Let’s get this thing done.” And I’ve heard him say, “Well, the only thing that’s doable is a 60-day extension.” How is that? We’ve got time before the end of the year. Let’s do our work like the American people are having to do.

RUSH: And last night on the Bret Baier show, the Special Report on Fox, Bret Baier, the All-Star Panel, A. B. Stoddard from The Hill, she’s associate editor there, and Baier said, “Look, it’s a negotiation. So far we haven’t seen both sides come together. We haven’t seen senators say that they will do it.”

STODDARD: The House Republicans are digging in actually over principle, much as they have been accused of digging in over politics. There’s some politics involved, but they’re very angry with the Senate. The Senate has not passed a budget in a very long time. The Senate has been fond of temporary patches. It makes the Congress look more dysfunctional, and the House Republicans are rebelling against a temporary two-month patch to the payroll tax cut extension. That being said, this is not going to be understood by most Americans. This is a very high-risk gamble for the House Republicans. It’s bad politics. And people are tuned out for Christmas. They want their thousand dollars. They hate the Congress.

RUSH: Right. So they’re acting on principle, and that’s a loser. They’re acting on principle, but that’s a loser. ‘Cause the American people hate Congress and they want their thousand dollars. And they’re too stupid to understand it, too. They’re too stupid to understand that it’s 20 bucks a week. Too stupid to understand. They hate Congress, they want their thousand bucks. It hasn’t led to job creation, it hasn’t led to anything. A two-month deal is not gonna get anybody a thousand dollars. I’m sorry to yell, folks, I know you don’t like it, I just sometimes react so incredulously. A thousand dollars, the American people want their thousand dollars? The American people want their house on the beach! At what point does somebody stand up and say, “We don’t have the money here,” and that’s not what this is anyway, and there is no thousand dollars on the table in a two-month extension. We’re not talking a thousand dollars here.

Tyler in Indianapolis. Great to have you on the program, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Happy holidays, Rush.

RUSH: Thank you, sir. Thank you for taking my call. I just have a quick question. Why can’t we attack Obama personally? Why can’t we be critical of him?

RUSH: We can, but the Republicans think that the independents don’t like that and will feel sorry for him and get mad at whoever criticizes him and will vote Democrat.

CALLER: Okay. So by holding back and doing that, what are the benefits of that for us?

RUSH: Well, the benefit, the thinking is that the people, the independents are gonna see that we’re nice people and will stay with us. We’re nice people, and they will then vote for us. No, we’re not the meanies that the Democrats and the media say we are. So what we’ll really do, we will please the media and we please the media — ha-ha-ha-ha — we please the media and the independents will vote for us because we are nice people.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: Might not be satisfying, but you asked. I’m telling you the truth.

CALLER: All right. Well, so with people, you know, holding back and saying, you know, they’re gonna vote for us and things like that, how will it change, you know, to defeat Obama? I mean to repeal Obamacare and things like that?

RUSH: It won’t. Do you ever hear the Democrats pulling back from their attacks on us? You ever wonder why the independents never get mad at Democrats for saying personal, untrue things about us? You ever ask, why do the independents not get mad when the Democrats get mean? We’re not even talking about getting mean here, we’re just being honest. How come the independents never threaten to leave the Democrats when they say we want to starve old people. Do we ever see the media hold back in their attacks on us? I’m telling you, it is a prison that they have put us in and we have willingly locked the cell. We have locked ourselves in. It’s absurd, but you asked, and that’s the answer.

I know you’re out there and you don’t understand it. Understand it. I told you the exact truth. It’s that silly. The independents will like us and they’ll vote for us. The independents will see that we are not the mean people that the Democrats say that we are. But the minute that we attack Obama, then they’re gonna say, “See, those are racists, and they’re sexists, and they’re bigots.” But the Democrats, they can never be racists; they can never be sexists; they can never be bigots; they can never be mean; they can do whatever they want, and the independents will eat it up, lap it up, love it. Yep, that’s what we’re told out there, Tyler.